


The games we play

by betabee



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Castle AU, F/M, Rumbelle Christmas in July, rcij
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 01:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4415636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betabee/pseuds/betabee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My secret santa gift for rumpelstiltskin-wait on tumblr in July! Prompt was: dark castle hide and seek. Enjoy!<br/>Summary: Even the Dark One gets bored sometimes, and it's hard to be a serious and terrifying sorcerer all the time. His maid becomes one of the few people to see his more childish  and playful side during her stay at the Dark Castle...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The games we play

The Dark One didn't usually get bored. Usually there was an interesting deal to capture his fancy, a new potion to research and make, a vital lead in his quest to perfect the curse and find his son again.  
None of that was happening today. The people calling out for magical assistance were being whiny and unimaginative, the research into a potion of true love was getting nowhere, and there was nothing to be done to further the progress in the curse at that moment in time. Regina was busy with trying to run a kingdom successfully (how long that was going to last for, he wasn't sure), Maleficent was too grumpy for company (and you don't ask again with a fire-breather in the room) and there was no-one else to capture his interest. He was stuck in the dark castle, waiting for something to happen or inspiration to strike.  
He hated waiting.  
He hopped onto the table in the dining room, swinging his legs and gazing around at his spinning wheel in the corner. He would spin, but he had spun and spun and spun all day yesterday, the fruits of which now filled one of the long-abandoned cells in the dungeon.  
A door opened. He whipped his head around to watch his maid enter the room, rags and a bucket in her hands. She startled at spotting him on the table, the water in the bucket sloshing at her sudden halt.  
“Oh! You’re not usually out of your tower at this time of day,” she ventured cautiously. “Would you like some tea or biscuits? Should I come back later to clean?”  
He waved a hand lazily. “Don’t worry too much, dear. I just wanted a change of scenery, that’s all. Come in!”  
Her face relaxed at this into a small smile, and she headed across the room to start dusting down the shelves inside the cabinet, taking care with the various magical and delicate items inside. Rumpelstiltskin was content to watch her work from his seat on the table for a few minutes before he was swinging his legs again, humming softly, pondering what to do to alleviate the sheer tediousness of waiting around.  
“Your humming is very distracting, you know.” The quiet voice of his maid floated over from the cabinet.  
“Well, I’m bored, dearie. If there’s anything you can do to remedy that, by all means suggest something. But in the meanwhile this is my castle, I can hum where I please!” He snapped back.  
She turned and gestured pointedly with the dusty rag in her hand. “I would suggest a game or something, but I’m busy cleaning your castle at the moment. Go read a book or something!” She bent to the bucket at her side to wash out the rag, but with a sudden snap of the Dark One’s fingers, both it and the rag in her hand were gone. She returned her gaze to the shelves to find them sparkling clean, before turning back to the other occupant of the room with an incredulous look.  
“If you’re going to do that, what do you employ me for?”  
He chose to ignore her question and hop off the table. “What game shall we play? Quoits? Skittles? Hopscotch?”  
“Not hopscotch!” She half-shouted. “I’m not cleaning chalk off these marble floors!”  
“Very well. Do you have any bright ideas then?”  
“Hmm… I didn’t get the chance to play a lot of games as a child- all the other kids were allowed outside, but I often wasn’t because of my father. But I often enjoyed hide-and-seek on rainy days when the other kids had to stay inside too. I mean, I’ve still got a lot of the castle to explore… what do you think?”  
He considered it for a moment before nodding. “Very well, dear. A ground rule, though. Don’t try to enter any rooms where the doors are locked- I’ve probably warded them closed for good reason and I don’t fancy trying to find a replacement maid anytime soon.”  
“Okay, as long as you promise not to use magic to cheat to find me or to cheat to hide somewhere inaccessible- the game won’t be as fun otherwise.”  
“As you wish. How long shall we give each other to hide? A count of 50?”  
“Sounds good.” She replied with a small smile. “Do you want to go first?”  
“Very well.” He gestured, and with a grandiose flourish, vanished in a puff of scarlet smoke.  
Belle’s smile immediately vanished, and she hit her forehead in mild exasperation as she made her way out the hall towards the rest of the castle. “Loopholes. Of course he’d find the loopholes…” she muttered as she climbed the stairs and started the long exploration.

****

It took her a good 4 hours to locate the Dark one, sitting in one of the tower rooms and watching the sun set out the window from a convenient armchair.  
“Took you long enough, dearie.”  
“Well you were the one using magic to hide! This castle is too big to search on foot if you can just poof everywhere!” her voice rose incrementally as her tirade went on. “Trust you to always go for the loopholes!”  
“I wasn’t cheating- Just using what advantages I have.”  
“Well, can we institute a blanket ban on magic for these games? It’s not as fun otherwise…”  
He considered her words for a few moments. “Very well. But I retain the right to use magic if I need to end the game suddenly for whatever reason. Do we have a deal?”  
“I guess so.”  
“Good.” He stood up from his armchair. “Then it’s your turn to hide, dear. Off you trot.”  
She hesitated, then turned to the tower doorway at a shooing gesture from Rumpelstiltskin. She walked briskly down the stairs, listening to the retreating count as she descended.  
Belle did her best to be quiet as she ran through the castle, looking for somewhere in the endless maze of corridors to hide. Eventually her search led her to a small door cracked open at the end of a long hallway, which she quickly slipped through. The door let out a small squeak as she closed it behind her and looked around the room she had entered.  
It was a bedroom, her first scan of the room told her, with a four-poster bed dominating the tiny room. A window let the evening sunlight stream in, giving an orange glow to the furnishings, which were all in varying shades of a sunny yellow.  
A high-pitched giggle echoed down the corridor outside; Belle quickly darted under the bed, and tried to slow her breathing as the door squeaked open again. Her heartbeat pounded through her ears as she lay frozen under the bed, the bed skirt plunging the area into darkness. The wooden floorboards creaked slowly.  
There was a sudden flurry of movement and light as the bed skirt was lifted near her head and Rumpelstiltskin’s head appeared at an odd angle.  
“Found you!” he almost chirped in a sing-song voice, moving back so she could crawl out from under the bed. “You really need to dust under there, dear.”  
She looked at her dress the moment she was upright again, noting the clumps of debris now clinging to the front of her skirts. “Well, I’ve never been in this room before. Whose bedroom is it?”  
“No-ones, at the moment. I was considering it as an alternative to your dungeon room, but you’d need to make sure it was clean and tidy at all times…”  
“I’d love it! …I mean, I would be able to take responsibility for keeping it clean…” she trailed off, trying to temper her enthusiasm for her new room lest he change his mind.  
“Very well. I’ll leave you to get started then, there’s a potion I need to see to. And you should probably start on dinner.”  
She looked out at the setting sun and hurried out the room after seeing how late it was, following after the Dark one’s retreating back.  
“Could we play again sometime?” She asked. He stopped walking quite suddenly at her words, but after a pause, replied “I don’t see why not, dear. Always more rooms to find for you to clean!” He continued on along the hallway and up the stairs to his lab, while she made her way down to start on dinner, a smile on her face and a skip in her step the entire way.

****

The games of hide and seek became a surprisingly frequent event over the next few months- it started with once a week, but quickly moved up to every other day as they fell into the new routine. Some days Rumpelstiltskin would come find Belle cleaning one of the new rooms she had found to initiate a game; other times Belle would run around the castle for a little while to his usual haunts after finishing her cleaning for the day.  
She found a good many rooms during their games, testing doors at random and often tumbling inside whenever the door was unlocked, since a good many refused to budge under her touch.  
She found the other great hall quite early on, startled by the organ music playing the moment she opened the door. This hall was much darker and more what her books would expect from the Dark one’s castle, with black walls and floors, stupidly low lighting (she tripped over several ‘decorative’ skeletons on her way across the room) and an organ dominating one end of the room, playing the most dramatic music she had heard in a long while, with angry chords hammering themselves out. Unfortunately, the sounds of what she would later learn was the overture to The Phantom of the Opera echoed through the open door to the rest of the castle, leading the Dark one to run into the room a few minutes later.  
They came to a mutual agreement that said room really didn’t need cleaning on a regular basis, and was much better left with the door closed and firmly locked.

****

She decided to hide in his potions lab once, and once only.  
It was a quiet day deal-wise, and she had finished a spring-clean of the other great hall (her ears were still ringing slightly) and thus they both decided that a day playing more hide-and-seek was in order. It was her turn to hide, and as she raced around the castle, Belle was trying to out-think the Dark one. Where in the castle would he never think she would be brave enough to step into? Where would she never hide?  
Her footsteps took her up, and up, and up, until she was standing before the door she had known about for a good while and never stepped inside. He would never think that she would enter the beast’s lair- would he?  
She tried the doorknob gently, fully expecting it to be locked.  
It twisted with hardly a sound, and the door swung open. Holding in her gasp of surprise (the stairwells, she had learned, were very good at transmitting sound) she stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind her of its own accord.  
The room she had entered was surprisingly light and airy for the dark castle, with several skylights in the cavernous roof and a gentle breeze drifting through the room. A fire crackled merrily in the corner, and the tables and shelves were covered haphazardly with bottles, herbs, boxes, equipment she couldn’t even begin to describe, bowls and pestles and mortars and an unusual number of items that wouldn’t look out of place in her kitchen downstairs. Potions were sitting everywhere in a dazzling array of colours, all with paper labels stuck to the sides, the names scrawled out in the scratch that the Dark One called handwriting, and several were balanced precariously on the edges of shelves and tables around the room, which lent a certain caution to her movements as she crossed the room to look for a hiding place.  
She eventually decided to hide behind a small table near the back of the room, still covered in potions but covered in a tablecloth which would, she hoped, disguise her hiding place. She crouched and lifted the embroidered edge with the utmost care. Belle was almost under the table when-  
Crack!  
-her head hit a table leg, and she hear a smash next to her slippered foot. A cloud of turquoise smoke enveloped her in a matter of seconds, but disappeared just as quickly. She didn’t feel any different, but crawled out from under the table to peer at the label among the shards of glass now scattered over the floor. Her foot started to throb; there was certainly a shard or two embedded in her ankle, but she could deal with that later.  
She stood up quickly as a swirl of purple smoke wafted through the middle of the room, Rumpelstiltskin materializing within. His eyes seemed to pass her over completely as he moved to the shattered bottle, crouching to look at the label also. He deciphered his handwriting in less than a second, a curse coming from his mouth.  
“Of all the potions she had to knock over… Are you still in the room, dear?”  
“Yes,” she squeaked from behind him. He whirled so suddenly he almost knocked them both over, but in an instinctual move she grabbed his arms to steady him. His arms grasped at thin air for a second before clutching her elbows to keep her there.  
“Why on earth would you think hiding in my potions laboratory was a good idea, you silly girl!” He shook her arms as he berated her, gaze not quite focused on her. “Do you know what other potions I had on that table other than an invisibility potion? You could have knocked over the draught of living death, and been consigned to sleep for eternity. Or you could have knocked over the vial of greek fire, and then we’d have really been done for! The castle would be destroyed, and for what?”  
“I’m sorry… I just thought it would be somewhere you wouldn’t think to look.” She replied meekly.  
“I wouldn’t have thought to look. You’re very lucky that the place is warded to tell me if any of my potions get smashed. I wouldn’t have used magic to get here, but I was in the dungeon and I didn’t know what you’d smashed.”  
He slowly loosened his grip on her arms; she stepped back carefully. “So… is there an antidote?”  
“You’re very lucky with your potion-smashing habits, dearie. There is, but it will take a few hours to make. Go wait in the library; I’ll come find you when it’s ready and I don’t fancy running around the castle to find you again.”  
She nodded invisibly, then turned to leave. A hiss of pain left her as her injured ankle brushed against the fabric of her skirts, and before she could escape he grabbed for where her elbow was again.  
“Are you injured?” he asked quietly, pulling her back into the room.  
She turned to face him. “There might be a few shards of glass in my ankle.”  
He sighed in exasperation, then gestured to a chair nearby which she hadn’t noticed earlier. “Go sit down, I’ll see what I can do.”  
She hopped over to the chair, sinking down onto the wooden frame as he walked around the room, grabbing this and that, before coming over to the chair and holding a hand out over where he thought her ankle was. Gentle red smoke curled out from his fingers, wending its way though the air towards the splinters of glass in her ankle, which glowed red. His eyes focused on the pieces, and his other hand helped lift her invisible ankle more surely. With a pair of tweezers, he lifted the pieces of red glass away with an unusual level of care, pausing at her winces, and left the broken pieces in a small bowl by her feet. Within no time her ankle was bandaged; he stood up and removed the rest of the broken glass from the floor with a flourish.  
“There. Do you think you can make your way to the library without any further incidents, dear?”  
She tested her weight on her ankle, which gave a small throb but no other signs of pain. “Yes, I should be fine. Thankyou.” She almost gave a curtsy before realizing it would be useless, then turned and left the room with a chirpy “See you later!”.  
He found her in the library later, a floating book atop her usual armchair, and left the finished antidote on the side-table for when she surfaced from her book, creeping out of the library again like a ghost who was never there.

****

She once, on her attempts to hide, found an unused bedroom that was decidedly different from the others. There was no layer of dust hanging off everything, for starters. The four-poster bed was surprisingly small, the desk across the room was scattered with old toys and games and trinkets; a worn skipping rope here, an interestingly coloured rock there, and a roughly-whittled hand spindle with a thick uneven thread wound around that looked suspiciously like a first attempt that had been given up on. Belle's curiosity was rapidly overtaking her need to hide, and she looked in one of the drawers of the small wardrobe nearby.  
She was just holding up a very small hemp shirt when she heard footsteps outside. The shirt slipped through her fingers as she turned to watch the Dark One enter the room.  
His expression was like nothing she had ever seen before- murderous rage and an almost undefinable sadness combined on his face to give her the solid impression that she had done something terribly, terribly wrong. She stood, frozen, as he crossed the room towards her with slow steps. She had never been scared of him before. Not really.  
"Get. Out." His voice seething and almost quivering at the same time. Belle was still frozen to the spot.  
"GET OUT! GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!" His voice grew louder and closer to a sob as he grabbed her by the elbow and almost threw her out the room. The door slammed behind her as she picked herself up off the corridor floor outside, and after a few moments she put her ear to the door. Muffled sobs emitted from inside, and she quickly retreated, down the stairs and back to the kitchen.  
It was only much later that she realised that the expression he had worn upon finding her in that room was very much the same way her father had looked when the Dark One had named her as his price for their lives.

****

The evil queen has always had the annoying habit of letting herself into the castle at the most inopportune times. It was a few weeks into their regular competitions when she arrived in the great hall to Rumpelstiltskin hiding under the table.  
"What on earth are you doing down there?" She exclaimed with annoyance after lifting the tablecloth. Her exclamation, however, was cut off with a loud shush from the dark one, who poked his head out with a gesturing finger.  
“Go away, I’m busy!” he whispered with loud exasperation.  
“Busy doing what? Hiding under a table?”  
“Hiding from my maid! Look, are you going to stand around giving away my position or are you going to go away? I’d invite you under the table but I don’t think there’s room for your skirts today.” He made a shooing gesture with the hand already out from under the table, but Regina grabbed him, dragging the Dark One out with an undignified squawk.  
“If you want to hide that much you could magic yourself to the other end of the castle. Now, I need to speak to you about a certain Snow White…”  
He huffed, but listened patiently to her rant about how the bandit-princess was still evading her and how she needed one particular potion to find her and have her vengeance- at least, until they were suddenly interrupted by a flurry of brown and blue bursting into the great hall and almost knocking him over.  
“Found you!” Belle cried with an exuberance she probably wouldn’t have used if she had spotted the other occupant of the room. Her expression of triumph quickly was replaced by an almost comical look of surprise and mild terror. She awkwardly disengaged herself from Rumpelstiltskin.  
“Ah, I didn’t realise we had company…”  
“Nor did I, dear. I’ll try to warn you next time we have unexpected guests.” He replied in the high trill he used in company, directing the last two words with a stare at Regina, who was looking between the two of them with curiosity.  
Belle quickly retreated from the room, muttering about dusting, and the two sorcerers watched her close the doors to the great hall behind her.  
“What on earth possessed you to play games with the help, Rumpelstiltskin?” The queen snorted with disdain.  
“I don’t need to explain myself to you, dearie. Not when you barge into my castle with a lack of common courtesy and deals I am not interested in. Now get out!”  
The queen cast the angry imp a speculative look as she walked out the castle. There was definitely something going on between the Dark one and his maid; maybe something she could exploit…

****

It took some persuading before Belle would agree to the introduction of Hopscotch on the patio out the font of the Dark Castle, and instead of a chalked depiction of the squares required, Rumpelstiltskin managed, with the aid of a little magic and a deal with a local stonemason, to create the required pattern in elegant marble within the patio in the space of a day.  
It was Rumple who proved the most adept at Hopscotch, since despite the now-healed leg injury, had the important advantage of childhood practice. Belle took a little time to master the hopping skills necessary, but the game was abandoned after a month when, due to a recent rainstorm, a misplaced hop sent Belle sprawled across the patio, the sound of her head cracking on the marble sending the Dark One into an uncharacteristic panic.  
The only injury she ended up sustaining was a twisted ankle and a mild concussion, but by the time she was well enough to venture out onto the patio again, all traces of the beautiful marble stonework were long gone, the stone returned to a monotonous gentle grey once more.

****

Pain does not make it easy to read books.  
At least, that is what Belle found out shortly after twisting her ankle. She had been sat on a chaise-lounge in the great hall with a stack of books and her foot propped up, with stern instructions not to get up, and to call if she needed help or anything fetching, all said in the snarkiest tones possible to try and allay the very obvious notion that the dark one, indeed, did care for his caretaker. She tried to engross her attention in the latest in the series she was reading about a young woman overthrowing a dystopian government, but the throbbing pain meant she kept reading the same sentence over and over. She threw the book across the room with a cry of exasperation just as the doors opened and her employer wandered in.  
“Whatever did that book do to you, dear? It’s not like you to throw books.” Rumpelstiltskin said as he went to pick up the book and return it to the pile at her side.  
She gave a huff and crossed her arms. “My ankle hurts and I can’t concentrate on the book! Are you sure I can’t have anymore painkillers yet?”  
“Nope. Unless you want a fatal overdose, but I don’t fancy having to find a new maid. Good caretakers are hard to find.”  
“Well what do you expect me to distract myself with, then?”  
He waved a hand and conjured a chess board with a flurry of red smoke. “A game we can play without running around. Do you know how to play chess?”  
“Yes,” she said, shifting to sitting up on the lounge as he conjured another chair and a table. “I used to play with my father, though I confess I’m not that good at it.”  
“We’ll see.” He replied with a smirk, and their game began.

****

Belle proved to be correct in her level of skill at chess; the Dark One proved himself an excellent player, so they moved on to other games quite quickly. Over the next two weeks, Belle taught him Nine Men’s Morris and Draughts, while Rumpelstiltskin introduced his maid to the delights of a game he often played in his home village before he became the Dark One, called Tafl. She often won Nine Men’s Morris, he often won Draughts, they often drew on Tafl, which surprised Rumpelstiltskin greatly (she heard him muttering to himself afterward about being “out of practice”).  
Their games were scattered throughout the castle; a game of chess was always set up in the great hall, and they ended up having ongoing games during the day, moving a piece here and there inbetween their cleaning or deals or reading or potion-making or other day-to-day activities. A Tafl board was set up in the library for evenings when they could sit down together and play by the fire, while a quick game of draughts often got played inbetween chess games while eating tea at the long table in the great hall (Neither of them had noticed when they started eating together at the table in the great hall. It happened so naturally that by the time they noticed it seemed daft that they ever hadn’t).

****

Her ankle recovered surprisingly quickly after the board games became a more regular occurrence, and Belle was soon able to venture out into the gardens of the Dark Castle once more.  
The only two parts of the garden she had seen before (or frequented for that matter) were the vegetable and herb garden (just outside the kitchen window) and the magical herb garden (next to the herb garden, with several ‘DO NOT ENTER’ signs stuck in the ground by the fence). But now, she had a free afternoon, and took the time to venture deeper into the gardens to explore.  
She found an amazing array of flowers, many of which she had never seen the likes of before; there was a rock garden, and several fountains dotted about here and there. It didn’t really have the feel of the rest of the dark castle, and she inquired about this later at the dinner table.  
“Do you think the Dark One ever had a penchant for gardening, dear?” the reply came.  
“If you never wanted to garden, why does it even exist?” she asked in return.  
“Well, it came with the castle when one of the previous Dark Ones acquired it. It’s kept from being overgrown by magic, since none of the previous Dark Ones wanted a gardener.”  
“If you can keep the place tidy with magic, why am I here then?”  
The last question got her a stern look and a shooing gesture in the direction of the kitchen.  
It was the next day when Rumpelstiltskin came bounding up to where she was busy mopping the main stairwell, a certain familiar impatience in his step.  
“Why don’t we play hide-and-seek outside today?” she asked. “I want to explore more of the garden.  
“Very well. But don’t go into the magical herb garden, half the plants in there will kill you on sight.” Was his reply, so they wandered side by side out the front door. He turned back towards the castle walls to count, and she set off at a gentle jog through the rose garden to an orchard she hadn’t explored.  
She ended up curled up in an apple tree, skirts hitched up and hiding in the branches. Belle tried to slow her breathing as the gate to the orchard creaked open nearby, and mostly succeeded, the birdsong nearby covering any other small noises. She watched as Rumpelstiltskin darted around between the trees, his eyes scanning around but never quite looking up.  
He had just passed under where she sat when she unconsciously shifted her weight, and the branch she was resting on gave an alarming crack.  
She had all of two seconds for an expression of surprise to jump onto her face as her eyes met Rumple’s before the branch gave way and she dropped like a stone. Leaves and a blur of green and brown rushed passed her eyes, but her motion stopped abruptly and far less painfully than expected. It took a moment to register the lithe arms around her legs and back, and she turned to look at an equally confused Rumpelstiltskin holding her up.  
“Erm… Thanks?” She said after a few moments of awkward silence.  
“No matter, dear. I guess I found you a bit sooner than intended, yes?”  
There were a few moments of brief fumbling as they worked together to set Belle back on her feet; she brushed off her skirt and he stepped away.  
“Well, I’ll go hide somewhere now then.” He muttered, and almost shot out of the orchard, leaving a slightly unsettled Belle to start her count off again.

****

He had promised a game of chess as soon as she had finished dusting in the library, but was now nowhere to be found in his usual haunts. (Granted, she had gotten a bit distracted by a book or three, but she hadn’t taken that long). She could have resorted to calling his name, but decided to set off around the castle instead. Their last game of hide and seek had been a couple of weeks before, games of tag out in the gardens and board games in the great hall in the evenings taking their place- all of which was well and good, but there was still so much of the castle left to explore!  
She decided on a more methodical approach this time around, opening every door she could as she wandered up staircases and along dusty corridors.  
Her progress was halted when she spied an open door in a far less dusty corridor, bootprints clear in the dust. She crept over in her slippers and peered inside, before creaking open the door and moving inside.  
Her eyes were met with the brightest array of colours she had seen in her life- beautiful, shining bolts of fabric stacked against the walls, a cabinet filled with threads in all bright blues and reds and greens and yellows, a couple of mannequins with half-made ballgowns draped over them, and through the small doorway opposite-  
Through the doorway-  
-a grand array of gold fabric gleamed back at her. An array of mannequins stood there, a multitude of golden ballgowns with outrageous amounts of bows, sequins, jewels, embroidery, in all different styles and sizes.  
She whirled back around to the first room as Rumpelstiltskin walked in, barely noticing her as he walked over to a half-finished bodice on the table in a light green, picking up needle and thread as he went to resume sewing. He remained oblivious as she wandered up behind him, watching him sew over his shoulder.  
“I didn’t know you made clothes.” She said, startling him slightly, but he continued sewing.  
“I’ve been around for 300 years and produce enough gold thread to wreck the economy several times over. I got bored.” Was his remarkably slow and gentle reply as he methodically continued weaving the gold thread back and forth through the fabric.  
“Did you make my dress?” She asked, gesturing at her light blue skirts.  
“No… I can make you some clothes if you like, but it’s not a serious hobby. I magicked those up- the dress you came in was in an atrocious state.”  
“That’s true… is my old dress still around? It was one of my favourites…”  
He stood up from his sewing and led her back to the room of gold dresses, to the back, where a dress exactly like her old dress stood on a mannequin, good as new and an even brighter gold than before.  
“I made a new version, the old one was too damaged around the hem. I don’t advise wearing it for cleaning again though, dearie- I put a lot of work into making it an exact replica!” he said with a giggle.  
She make a circle of the dress, lifting the fabric here and there, running her fingers over the embroidery with a small smile on her face before returning to Rumpelstiltskin’s side. Quick as a dart, she flung her arms around him, a muffled “Thankyou” murmured into his shoulder as he stood in bewilderment. A few seconds passed before she released him and made for the door to the rest of the castle, only to turn back at the door.  
“I seem to recall you promised me a game of chess earlier?”  
He glanced at his half finished sewing project, then back at the maid.  
“Sure. I’ll meet you there!” He smiled at her, a true smile that crinkled his eyes and lit up his face, before vanishing in a puff of purple smoke.

****

There were other, more friendly visitors to the Dark Castle. Belle especially liked when Jefferson and his daughter Grace dropped by. Oftentimes the four-year-old was quite bored while Jefferson and the Dark One were dealing or jumping through hats into other worlds for a few hours. One day the girl tugged on her skirts while she was dusting in the great hall.  
“Can we play? I’m booorred.” She whined. Belle looked around at her dusting; there wasn’t that much left to do- she could take a little time out before Rumple and Jefferson returned.  
“Sure. What do you want to play?”  
“I dunno.” The little girl stuck a thumb in her mouth, looking up at her with wide eyes.  
“How about we play hide and seek? Do you like hide and seek?” Grace nodded slowly at this. “Okay. Do you want to count? What number do you want to count to?”  
The thumb left in a small pop sound. “I can count to ten!”  
“Great! Do you want to turn around then?”  
The little girl turned to face the wall and started counting; Belle darted out of the great hall. Her hiding place wasn’t far- one of the storage rooms for the gold thread a couple of corridors away- and she listened out for Grace as she started to run around the ground floor of the castle, giggling.  
The giggling got further and closer, and it was several minutes before she barreled into the room Belle was in, exclaiming “Found you!” with even more of a giggle.  
“You found me so quickly, sweetie. Now, is it your turn to hide? What number do you want me to count to?”  
“Erm… twenty!” She chirped. Belle feigned outrage, but then turned to the wall to start counting.  
She set off around the castle with a loud “Coming, ready or not!” and heard an answering giggle from a few corridors over. She walked around the castle towards where she heard Grace running.  
A sudden scream rent through the air, high and full of terror. Belle broke into a run, her knowledge of the corridors of the castle serving her well. A door she had never been in before was open, and she barreled through to-  
She stopped abruptly. The floor beyond the door quickly fell away to a massive pit of lava. The screams were coming from just beyond her feet, and she looked down to see the four-year-old holding onto the ledge she was standing on for dear life.  
“Help! Miss Belle, help! I slipped!” the girl cried, and Belle quickly got down on her knees and grabbed the girl’s arms. Grace did her best to use her feet against the rock to push herself up and help Belle pull her up, but the rock crumbled under her shoes, pulling Belle with her. Now Belle was holding all of Grace’s weight above the lava and had fallen precariously close to the edge.  
“RUMPELSTILTSKIN!!” Belle yelled as the rock beneath her crumbled away further. She slipped forward towards the edge, before a cloud of purple smoke enveloped her and Grace. She panicked slightly as the sensation of holding the four-year-old’s slender arms vanished; then the smoke cleared, and she found herself standing in the great hall again with an alarmed hatter, a child starting to feel less traumatized than she was 5 seconds ago, and (she turned her head towards) a surprisingly worried Dark One.  
“What on earth were you two doing in there?” He asked in an angry whisper, advancing on her as Jefferson comforted his daughter.  
“We were playing hide and seek! She was bored, I thought the castle was safe!” she replied in the same tone.  
“Well, it’s not! It’s called the Dark Castle for a reason, dearie! I shouldn’t need to lock the doors if I’m away for five minutes!” Their voices rose as the argument continued.  
“You could have warned me! She could have gone wandering off!”  
“You could have DIED!” he shouted, his face inches from hers, eliciting a sharp look from Jefferson and causing Grace to stop crying suddenly, the silence echoing through the room.  
The Dark One, after a few seconds, stumbled back, saying in a remarkably small voice, “Would you please show Jefferson and Grace out?” He turned and left the room quickly, almost running.  
She stepped over to where Jefferson was kneeling by his daughter, checking her for injuries and wiping away her tears. The hatter looked up at her.  
“I’m amazed at how much he cares for you, you know,” the hatter said.  
“Don’t be ridiculous- he’s just protecting his investment. And his business dealings.” She replied as he picked his daughter up and they headed to the front door. Jefferson turned to her at the door.  
“Don’t be silly, Belle- He dragged us back through the hat the moment he heard you call. He wouldn’t do that for me or my daughter, now, would he?” He gave her a wink, then started off down the path out the castle with his daughter in his arms, leaving Belle in a thoughtful mood at the castle door.

****

She was running through the castle, skirts hiked up, skidding around corners and almost crashing into an unexpected suit of armour (they had a habit of moving around occasionally). She darted into a room upon hearing the high-pitched giggle from the staircase behind her, and almost threw herself into the lone wardrobe standing on the wooden floorboards. The door closed behind her mostly, and she was left with a slither of light as she moved back among the fur coats, a smell of mothballs filling her nose.  
The door opened again a few seconds later; Rumpelstiltskin stepped into the wardrobe, pulling the door to behind him.  
“This was slightly too obvious a hiding place, right?”  
“Yep.” He replied in a high trill.  
“Why do you have a room with only a wardrobe in it anyway?”  
“This isn’t any old wardrobe, dear. Go further in and you’ll see what I mean.” He gestured further into the wardrobe behind her, holding aside fur coats. She turned and went further in, Rumple following closely behind.  
She found more mothballs and fur coats for a while, and kept pushing through the dark until-  
Leaves? Cold?  
-she stopped abruptly as the fur coats turned to spiky leaves and something crunched under her thin slippers, something cold. Her companion barreled into her back. Her “What on earth…?” elicited a chuckle.  
“Keep going,” he prompted, draping one of the fur coats over her shoulders. “It’s not far now.”  
She kept going, pushing past fur coats, then fir trees, further into the light. Eventually she stumbled into a clearing, snow covering the trees, a lone lamppost stood shining across the ground. She turned back to Rumple behind her.  
“I’ve read about this! This is Narnia, right?”  
“Correct, dear.” He smiled at her obvious delight.  
“I had some business dealings with the White Witch a few years back, and decided to keep my means of transport.”  
“Err, you have read the book?”  
“Yes. Don’t worry, Lucy isn’t due to arrive for another 30 years, and I’m trading that wardrobe to an old professor in six month’s time. Or so what little I can see of the future tells me. We’re unlikely to mess things up too much in that time. Fancy taking a wander about?”  
“Sure.” Her smile could have outshone the sun, and she took his proffered arm before they strolled off into the snowy forest, the lamppost gently lighting their footsteps together in the snow.

****

Inevitably, it all went wrong.  
She stormed out of the cell, her heart full of rage and sadness and a numb dull pain that was spreading and spreading. The man was an idiot, but his words, though she could see they were untrue in his eyes, still cut to her bones.  
She almost made it out the front door of the castle before remembering she wouldn't be wanting to come back and would need supplies. She turned and made her way back through the castle.  
The games of hide and seek served her well. She found a reasonably sized bag of holding that didn't seem to have any nasty enchantments on it, well worn and with several handy compartments inside. Her path through the castle took her to the wardrobe room, and while she briefly considered running away to Narnia, she emerged with some more suitable travelling clothes in a fetching shade of brown folded into the rucksack. A spool of gold thread found its place in there (a suitable amount to fund her travels) as well as a variety of food from the kitchens, a few of her favourite books (the library stop took a lot longer than she would have liked; she ended up with more books than would have fitted into a non-magical rucksack) and, after some consideration, the gold ballgown from the habadashery she had admired so much, along with other odds and ends to help her on her travels. She took a last look into the main hall to the empty spinning wheel before walking out the front door with determination in her step. Her heart was breaking, but the world was ahead and she wasn't going to go back. Had she looked back, she may have seen the silent figure of the Dark one watching her go from the tower, a frown on his face and holding back the rage for a few more minutes until she was safely out of sight.

 

** 30 years later **

 

The bell above the shop door rang out, echoing with a jingle around the dusty and darkened shop. Mr Gold startled at the sound- he wasn't expecting anyone at this time of the evening. He hurriedly closed the elaborate golden egg he was holding, tucking the precious glowing potion in his hand into the inside pocket of the jacket.  
"Are you Mr Gold?" A tentative, quiet female voice softly spoke from the front of the shop, a trace of an accent he hadn't heard in many years gracing his ears gently.  
"Yes, but I'm afraid the shop's clo..." He turned around as he spoke, his voice trailing off as his eyes were met with chestnut curls, an old, oversized coat, and a pair of blue eyes he had dreamed about for a good 30 years.  
"I was… I was told to find you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at hedwighood.tumblr.com. Hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
